Indirect communication between engineers through product model

Engineering for development and application of products recently applies highly integrated modeling and simulation in comprehensive product lifecycle management (PLM) systems. At the same time, role of the product model is being changed from information description to medium for the communication between engineers. This new role requires a product model that includes background of decisions on information of engineering objects enough for the purpose of above communication. The authors would like to contribute to the improvements necessary to enhance the above communication by an information content based solution for modeling of the background of engineering decisions on engineering objects. In this paper, they introduce influencing effects on engineering objects and explain their concept and method for indirect communication through product model. Following this, they discuss essential structure of the proposed virtual engineering space that is an extension of the currently applied model space. Finally, possibilities for the implementation of the proposed modeling in current PLM systems and research for the next future are outlined.